Yesterday we had the first meeting of the year for the McHenry County (Illinois) Civil War Round Table at the Woodstock Public Library. It was both a live and a Zoom meeting and Charlie Banks gave a presentation on Confederate Railroads. He is quite the expert on Civil War railroads.
His main thing was that it was the failure of the Confederate railroad system that was a big reason for the failure of the new country.
Railroads across the United States increased their mileage drastically in the decade before the war. But the South lagged way behind the North. In the South the Atlantic Ocean states had 5400 miles, Gulf states 2063 and South interior states 2666.
In the North, Chicago had become a major railroad hub with 11 railroads going through there.
In contrast, the future capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, had five, but none of them connected which caused unloading and reloading of cargos. Plus, making it worse, the lines had differing gauges. (Most Northern railroads used 4'8" gauge while Southern ones went with 5 feet.
--Old Secesh
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